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[New blindness incidents in Württemberg-Hohenzollern]
H G Krumpaszky1, A Haas, V Klauss
1Institut für Medizinische Informationsverarbeitung, Tübingen.
Unlabelled:
Blindness causes human suffering and high social costs. Preventive measures are necessary. Virtually all blind people are registered with the social services. Data from these institutions may help in (long-term) planning for blindness prevention.
Material And Methods:
The present investigation analysed data from the social services of the region Württemberg-Hohenzollern. The files contained information on ocular status, year of birth, district, and sex of newly blind subjects of the year 1994.
Results:
Two thirds (66.8%) of newly blind subjects are women. About half (47.8%) of all subjects are over 80 years of age. The most frequent causes of blindness are: macular degeneration, 33.7%; diabetic retinopathy, 17.3%; glaucoma, 13.8%; and high myopia, 6.6%.
Conclusions:
Blindness is increasingly a problem of high age. Diabetic retinopathy and glaucoma are still major causes of blindness. For these diseases blindness prevention is conceivable. Thus co-ordinated blindness prevention activities should focus on diabetic retinopathy and glaucoma.